Police last month took custody temporarily of an out-of-state dog about whose ownership a Smith Ridge Road family misled authorities.
An individual at 119 Smith Ridge Road initially led Animal Control to believe that a pit bull in her garage had been found, officials said. The dog was said by the reporting party to be aggressive, according to an incident report obtained by NewCanaanite.com through a Freedom of Information Act request.
Yet when police arrived at the home on the morning of April 11 to pick up the dog, they were told that the animal belonged to a man living there, Gilberto Constanza-Retana. He told police that his own brother—Francisco Retana, who lived in Brewster, N.Y.—had advised that the dog could no longer stay at the Smith Ridge Road home because the animal was a threat to children in the house, the incident report said. Further, Constanza-Retana told police that he was sick and could not care for the dog.
That brother, Retana, arrived and repeated what Constanza-Retana had said, according to the report. At the request of police officers, Retana then transported the dog to the New Canaan Veterinary Hospital, the report said. Under normal circumstances, the animal would have been transported to the New Canaan Animal Shelter at the dump, but the Animal Control officer who normally oversees that facility and feeds the animals there was out on leave at the time, officials said.
The officers who oversaw the transfer of the dog to the Vitti Street facility then learned from Animal Control Officer Allyson Halm “that she was misinformed about the dog by the complainant,” the report said, and that she had been “informed that it was a found dog not an owned dog.”
If the dog has an owner, the owner must take responsibility for the animal, Halm told police. Officers then oversaw the re-transfer of the pit bull from the New Canaan Veterinary Hospital back to Retana, it said.
It isn’t clear why the first person to call police said the pit bull had been found, why Retana sought to rid himself of the dog or why a story about a “found dog” was concocted for police instead of working with a rescue group to re-home the animal.